Some of Hollywood's most notable blockbuster films of the 1960s include: Psycho; Spartacus; Lawrence of Arabia; The Pink Panther; Mary Poppins ; The Sound of Music; Doctor Zhivago; Bonnie and Clyde; Midnight Cowboy; 2001: A Space Odyssey; Night of the Living Dead; The Planet of the Apes.- Began to break social taboos such as sex and violence causing controversy and fascination
- Turned increasingly dramatic, unbalanced, and wild
- Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider (1969) focused on the drug culture of the time
- Movies also became more sexually explicit, such as Roger Vadim's Barbarella (1968)
- Western was a direct result of the Kurosawa films. The influence of these films is most apparent in Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars (1964) starring Clint Eastwood and Walter Hill's Last Man Standing (1996)
- Rise of 'art house' films and theaters
- Move to all-color production in Hollywood movies
Fashion:
The Beatles exerted an enormous influence on young men's fashions and hairstyles in the 1960s which included most notably the mop-top haircut, the Beatle boots and the Nehru jacket
The hippie movement late in the decade also had a strong influence on clothing styles, including bell-bottom jeans, tie-dye and batik fabrics, as well as paisley prints
The bikini finally came into fashion in 1963 after being featured in the movie Beach Party
Mary Quant invented the mini-skirt which became the rage in the late 1960s
Women’s hair styles ranged from beehive hairdos in the early part of the decade to very short styles popularized by Twiggy just five years later
- The most prominent American TV series of the 1960s include: Star Trek: The Original Series, I Dream of Jeannie, The Outer Limits, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Pink Panther Show, The Time Tunnel, Mission: Impossible, The Flintstones and Bewitched
- Influenced by the desire to move into the modern age or future which the space age seemed to forecast
- Major works by Alexander Calder (mobiles and sculpture) or Helen Frankenthaler (non-representational art) showed a desire to escape from details to interpret
- Andy Warhol was a leading name in pop art
- Assemblage art, op art (or optical art) (ex. Vasarely)
- Kinetic abstraction (ex. Marcel Duchamp)
- Reflected what was happening in the political arenas and social issues of America in the sixties
- A book which described some of the turmoil of race relations as they affected people in America, Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird is a story about a small southern town and social distinctions between races
- Sylvia Plath (The Bell Jar), and Mary McCarthy (The Group) spoke of women in roles outside those of the happy wife and mother of the fifties
- Women like Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique, and Gloria Steinem, led the way for many women
- Disillusionment with the system was the theme of books like Catch-22 and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
- 1961 - Peace Corps created by Pres. Kennedy
- 1963 - Martin Luther King delivers his I have a dream speech
- 1963 - Pres. John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas
- The Presidential Commission of the Status of Women (1963) presented disturbing facts about women's place in our society. Betty Friedan, Pauli Murray and Gloria Steinem, (National Organization for Women) questioned the unequal treatment of women, gave birth to Women's Lib, and disclosed the "glass ceiling."
- The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was amended to include gender. The birth control pill became widely available and in 1967, both abortion and artificial insemination became legal in some states
- Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968The term "blacks" became socially acceptable, replacing "Negroes"
- Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, in Apollo XI, were the first men to walk on the moon in 1969
- Popular music entered an era of "all hits", as numerous artists released recordings
- Bands tended to record only the best of their songs as a chance to become a hit record
- The taste of the American listeners expanded from the folksinger, doo-wop and saxophone sounds of the 1950s to the Motown sound, folk rock and the British Invasion
- The rise of the counterculture movement, particularly among the youth, created a market for rock, soul, pop, reggae and blues music produced by drug-culture
- Elvis Presley resumes his musical career by recording "It's Now or Never" and "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" in 1960
- Chuck Berry's "Come On" was the A-side of the The Rolling Stones' first single, released on 7 June 1963
- The Beatles arrive in America in 1964, spearheading the British Invasion
- Bob Dylan goes electric at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival
- The Rolling Stones have a huge #1 hit with their song "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" in 1965
- In 1966, Nancy Sinatra's song "These Boots Are Made for Walking'" became very popular
- The Doors release their self-titled debut album The Doors' in 1967’
- The Jimi Hendrix Experience release two successful albums during 1967 Are You Experienced and Axis: Bold as Love that innovate both guitar, trio and recording techniques
- The Beatles release the seminal concept album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967
- Pink Floyd releases their debut record The Piper at the Gates of Dawn
- Bob Dylan releases the Country rock album John Wesley Harding in December 1967
- The Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 was the beginning of the so-called "Summer of Love"
- Johnny Cash releases At Folsom Prison in 1968
- 1968: after The Yardbirds fold, Led Zeppelin is formed by Jimmy Page and manager Peter Grant, with Robert Plant, John Bonham and John Paul Jones; and, released their debut album Led Zeppelin
- Big Brother and the Holding Company, with Janis Joplin as lead singer, becomes an overnight sensation after their performance at Monterey Pop in 1967 and release their massively successful second album Cheap Thrills in 1968
- The Woodstock Festival, and four months later, the Altamont Free Concert in 1969
- The Who release and tour the first rock opera Tommy in 1969
